'Narcissus' by Lucifer Sky
Review
I first alluded to Indira Lakshmi in the magazine when reviewing a Bar Pandora gig as she plays bass & other instruments live alongside Charlie & Matt. However I'm glad that not too long has passed since then before we could focus on her own work under the name of Lucifer Sky.
Out now is 'Narcissus', an eleven track album which is her latest, following 'Shimmering Wound' (2022) and 2020's 'M e t r o p o l i s _ Setline' .
Anyone who names their albums in those ways, operates under such a name & plays with Bar Pandora is likely to be working at the more experimental end of music you might think & you'd not be far wrong.
Her music is uncompromising ("composed of love, hunger & stone") and titles on this album include "Comfort in Denial", "I Had A Feeling You Would Ruin Me, So Instead I Have Ruined Myself", "Slowly Polarising", "Peripheral Neuropathy", "Weathered Memory" and "खेद" ["Regret"]: none of which sound light nor emotionally comforting listening.
The other titles ("25th December 2024", "याद रखना" ["Remember"], "नरगिस" ["Nargis"], "आत्महत्या" ["Aatmaghaati"] & "याद" ["Memory"]) at least do not send out quite the same initial signals, but until one delves into them, who can tell what lies within?
Well the answer to that of course is that while track titles (and I'm factoring ones on past releases also) may nudge expectations in certain directions, no-one, certainly not reviewers who aspire to some measure of objectivity, ought to be conditioned by those preliminary thoughts into their response to what they actually hear.
I think it's fair to say that darker areas of psyches and life interest Indira & to some extent her music maps & records her explorations. The titles are mostly just starting points & I'm not sure she provides "endings" in terms of theme: she just stops the music & leaves us to carry on the journey at our own pace.
The music tends to evoke the subject matter to stimulate the emotional research: I have a bit of an aversion to using the expression "soundscape" to describe a piece of music unless it's totally accurate a description: which it is here. This is mood music par excellence.
I say "music": there are vocals but they are fully integrated into mixes and although they have perfectly distinguishable lyrics which contribute to the pieces, form part of the overall effect Indira is going for.
I'm not sure that I've ever used the term musique concrète about anything I've written about before but it seems to fit the bill here nicely. I haven't the skill to break down any of the tracks into their myriad component parts nor do I think is desirable nor respectful ("he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."). Clearly a great deal of care, thought & skill went it devising precise combinations of voices, instruments, samples & generated sounds and it's the end results we ought to focus upon.
The album title suggests both self reflection and how it can be taken to damaging lengths. There is plenty of the former (well frankly all of it) but Indira also clearly is self aware enough not to take it to the point of obsession nor so it excludes others in a bout of solipsism. It's an album of exploration of boundaries perhaps as well as inner demons.
This music will affect you: it will ask you questions but doesn't require nor expect answers back from you. You won't necessarily be able to provide them. But it'll get processes underway in your mind. After all this is an artist who can coax creativity from flora.
This is experimental music at its best: challenging, purposeful & affective.
Lucifer Sky has been very active of late: playing with Alys Rain, Ryosuke Kiyasu, Echo Juliet, Tomi, By Bizarre Hands and Caslean among others and can be next caught live in Nottingham on August 15th as part of The Church of Sound event at J T Soar.
